Wikimedia chapters/Reports/Wikimedia Oesterreich/May2013

Vienna Office

As the requirements for reporting grew during the past quarter, we recognised that this would be too much work to handle for our Executive Director and the volunteers of the board. That is why in April 2013 the board decided to engage the Intern Thomas Planinger as a full employee, starting from May. He will serve in our Vienna office as an administrative assistant to the Executive Director and, following the German and Swiss chapters, as a community manager for the Austrian community.

In addition, some amendments (e.g. improved lighting) to our office facilities were done by staff and volunteers in order to spare the additional costs for craftsmen.

Wiki Loves Public Art

Among four other European countries Wikimedia Austria participated in the first Wiki Loves Public Art contest in May 2013. The goal of Wiki Loves Public Art was not only to get free-licensed and high-quality pictures of public art, but also to increase the general awareness for public art and available open data it as well as attracting new photographers/editors to the Wikimedia-projects. The contest inlcuded only the cities of Vienna and Linz, as for other parts of Austria there was no comprehensive data on public art available.

Overall there have been 2.416 files uploaded by 110 uploaders in Austria. Of 1.233 public art objects in our de.Wikipedia-lists from Vienna and Linz, 1.002 have been illustrated with at least one picture after the contest. Many of the Austrian uploaders, especially those with only one or two pictures, have not contributed to a Wikimedia-project before. Of all participating countries, Austria came second regarding total amount of uploaded photograps and first regarding total amount of participants. All this despite the fact, that the contest was limited to two Austrian cities. This shows once more the outstanding popularity of photography projects in the Austrian community. For the full statistics please visit http://stats.wlpa.at/. In addition, we got some press coverage in regional and national media.

At the moment, the Austrian national Jury is working on its selection for the winning pictures of WLPA in Austria 2013.

More information:

Chapters Peer Review

Fae, board member of WMUK and active volunteer within the Chapters Association, took advantage of a private holiday in Vienna to conducted a peer review with WMAT. Peer reviews are a new tool designed and implented by the Chaperts Association which aim at fostering sharing and learning among chapters. These non-bureaucratic peer reviews aim at better understanding governance and sharing best practices for Wikimedia Chapters. The first draft of the peer review report is currently being compiled and will be published as an exemple for other chapters / user groups as soon as it is completed. For WMAT the chapters review proofed to be a valuable means of including "external perspectives" (that is to say not part of WMAT but with a profound understanding of the movement in general) and benchmarking into our processes of organizational development. For everybody who wants to learn more about chapter peer reviews there will be a session at Wikimania 2013.

Landtagsprojekt Niederösterreich

In May WMAT conducted its first "independet" Landtagsprojekt (photographing members of the State Parliaments). One of our most active photography volunteers and board member Andrea Kareth, who took part in several Landtagsprojekte of WMDE, used her experience in order to design the Austrian edition of the project.

As mentioned in our previous monthly reports, the launch of the project was carefully prepared with several meetings with representatives of the State Parliaments and an information event / photography workshop for interested volunteers in Austria. The aim of the project was to attract mostly Austrian volunteers for the project, to have WP articles of all the members of the Lower Austria State Parliament and to add photographs to most of these articles. Another target was to present and explain Wikipedia and free licenses.

The project was very successful: All the required articles have been created by our volunteers and roughly 85 percent of the politicians could be photographed. The event was conducted almost completely with Austrian volunteers (six people) and Ralf Roletschek from Germany, who assisted the project mainly with his technical expertise (illumination etc.). One staff member was involved with assisting the project leader regarding infrastructure and planning. Most volunteers who participated in the project have been to our preparatory workshop before and found it very helpful. The atmosphere was great, the support of the State Parliament administration unconditional and the politicians were very interested and constructive. All parties agreed, that the project was very well prepared from all sides and were quite satisfied with the output. We also prepared a press release that got some news coverage.

In our view, this was the most successful start for the project which provides the perfect basis for future projects. One more Landtagsprojekt in another State Parliament is planned for fall. In addition, the Lower Austria State Parliament invited us to conduct a more in-depth workshop on Wikipedia and free licenses for politicians and administraion staff in fall.

Results and further information: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Landtagsprojekt/Nieder%C3%B6sterreich/Ergebnisse

WikiCup

Like last year, WMAT decided to support this years WikiCup in the German WP by sponsoring little incentives for the contestants. This year's participants of the first two rounds received a specially produced Wikipedia edition of a typical Austrian chocolate. And because chocolate makes people happy, the feedback was accordingly cheery.

Nomination of WikiCon 2012 for Zedler-price 2013

At May 25th 2013 the award ceremony of the 2013 Zedler-price by Wikimedia Germany took place in Berlin. The WikiCon 2012 in Dornbirn (Austria), where Wikimedia Austria was significantly involved in the preparation and execution, was there nominated in the category "Community project". The nomination is a success for the tuned concept of an event where the contributors of the Wikimedia-projects could work together for their sustainable personal achievment. This has also become manifested in the Declaration of Dornbirn.